Ostrovsky’s telling of the life of Mata Hari reads like a novel, with each disparate milieu well-rendered and a sensual vibe maintained throughout. Comely Dutch girl overcomes adolescent abandonment, an early marriage to an abusive colonial officer twice her age and the murder of a young son by Javanese bandits to become the very embodiment of exotic seduction in the Paris of Jarry, Apollinaire and Colette. She dances the roles of Venus, Cleopatra and Salomé from Monte Carlo to Madrid, then incarnates the role of courtesan in a demimonde that attracts artists and industrialists and cabinet ministers before making herself into a secret agent during the Great War. Such an improbable life could only come to a poetic end, and Margaretha is executed by firing squad at Vincennes. ( )